Over here and very welcome

I frequently give talks in schools, which makes a great break from writing, and is an experience I really enjoy. (If you are a school and want to know more, see the talks page on my website for full details.) It's not just a matter of getting away from a computer, unlike many people I get a real buzz out of public speaking. Doing this has taken me all over the country. But I was a little surprise to get an email asking me to speak to an American school class.

Not a bad venue for a school talk (but it was snowier today)

My books sell pretty well in the US (one of my two main publishers is the excellent US publisher, St. Martin's Press), so I wasn't totally surprised to hear from someone over there, but I was all prepared to get back to them saying 'Sorry, but it's rather a long way to travel' when I read the email a little more closely. It seemed that the class from the Wakefield Country Day School of Huntly, VA was taking an educational visit to the UK. And their first night, en route to Bath, they were stopping over in Swindon. So I was delighted to be able to give my first US school talk, appropriate enough on Inflight Science.

The intention was originally to give the talk at the students' hotel, but it proved cheaper to hold the event at the nearby Lydiard Park conference centre, which is very near where I live - so not only did I get to talk to my most distant audience yet (for science - I've done Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong for creativity), I didn't even have to get out of bed early to do it. After a minor panic caused by a fairly heavy snowfall overnight (which made Lydiard Park look great) it all went well. They were a lovely audience, if a little soporific after flying over yesterday, and it was good to meet the group leader Welby Griffin and the other adults with the party. All in all, an excellent morning.

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope

Search This Blog